Sure, sure, getting a European convention report from Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin is enough for even the most rabid news-seeker, but there were some things that I’ve come across that are at least a little timely, and FSFCPL has much more to say on the topic of Quai des Bulles, so I’m giving you bonus content today. For free!

• Those who follow the work of Christopher Baldwin know that within his nomadic travels, he has for a considerable time been working on an original graphic novel about the town of Glens Falls, New York. Today, he let us know that it’s available in his TopatoCo store. Glens Falls is fictional series of tours around town given by actual people, each highlighting significant and interesting aspects of the town in upstate New York. We at Fleen have not yet read it, but given Baldwin’s long and high-quality career making unique and wonderful stories, I’ma say this one merits an on-faith purchase.
• About a month ago, I mentioned a Kickstart to produce a line of anatomically-accurate, to-scale models of more ceratopsian dinosaurs than you’ve ever heard of. Oh, don’t give me that look. Unless you’re Abby Howard, you had no idea that Monoclonius, Nasutoceratops, Einiosaurus, Spiclypeus, or Wendiceratops were even a thing.

  You may also recall that I said that a large part of the line of figures was based on meeting some truly impressive funding targets, with my beloved Triceratops (adult) being the next-to-last figure to be unlocked at the unholy level of US$450,000 and I needed a lot of you — a lot a lot of you — to pledge or I’d never get my trike. The campaign ended at US$272,647, or more than US$180,000 short of the necessary level, damn you all.

  But project creator David Silva has done something I’ve never seen before, and I think it’s worth mentioning because a clever creator might want to emulate his tactic. Given that nearly half of the stretch goals were not reached, Silva is using BackerKit to continue the funding drive. As usual, BackerKit is being used to allow people to purchase additional stuff, using their original pledge as a credit to be expended, with the ability to pay up for more/new things. But he’s also allowing you to pre-order models that aren’t unlocked, which will not charge your card unless the required funding level is reached by a cutoff as late as February¹.

  It’s a second-chance stretch goal mechanism, one that is tailor-made to take advantage of everybody that says the day after the campaign closes I never knew! I would have pledged! As of this writing, three more figures have been unlocked via Backerkit (a fourth is only a few thousand away), and he’s increased his take to US$357,013. That additional 85 grand is in the two days since the BackerKit surveys went out. Put another way, if everything were to freeze right where it is, Silva’s increased his funding by a whopping 31 percent in 48 hours.

  Now for those with an interest in nonavian dinosaurs, there are plenty of lower-priced items available now that are certain to be produced (a 24 month calendar, gorgeous prints, even some of the smaller figures), and every one of you that finds something you like gets me closer to my enormous Triceratops. Here’s the link; go be a hero for the dino-loving kid (of whatever age) in your life.

Spam of the day:

Herb Under Tongue Destroys Fungus.

Herb has a weird name and an even weirder hobby.

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¹ Due to the high number of models envisioned, they were always going to be released in waves, with delivery between September 2020 and September 2021. As the locked critters are the largest/most complicated/most expensive models, he can continue to fundraise on them while starting production on the earlier waves, spreading out his own effort against the surety of future funds.

Yeah, some people will disappear by the time cards are charged, but I’ve got a much better chance of getting my trike now, if another US$93,000 can be raised by January.

For the record, though, two thoughts:

1. When I log an IT ticket because my working environment is failing and I include in the narrative exactly what needs to be fixed, kindly do not tell me that you need to consult the Subject Matter Expert to make sure I’m not an idiot, then send me a separate email that says (in essence) Dear Gary, we have you listed as a Subject Matter Expert, can you look at the ticket you logged and tell us if your suggested solution will work? If not, we’ll tell you that you said that you’re an idiot.

   Yes, this really happened.

2. Or rather, it happened after a lot of screaming because I couldn’t log the damn ticket in the first place, because something has decided that the office I’m assigned to doesn’t exist and therefore I don’t exist and therefore I can’t possibly log tickets.

   The solution proposed to me for this is — wait for it — to log a ticket about how I can’t log tickets.

All of which is to say, when I came across Gail Simone’s tweet while on hold and in a fairly murderous rage, it was exactly what I needed. Much respect to Ms Simone for the funniest thing I’ve read in about forever.

So Chris Onstad has been doing a series of drawing of a pair of cats on a motorcycle since last Tuesday. I just happened to refresh my Twitter tab at the right time and see the first one go up for sale. It’s going to look great next to my previous Onstad original, an oil pastel portrait of Ramses Luther Smuckles. When I kick it, my heirs and assigns are going to get some awesome art.

• The news coming out of Chile hasn’t gotten the same attention as that from Hong Kong, but it’s just as important; if you need a primer, The Nib has you covered. One side story that I came across today is that these latest protests against unfettered capitalism¹ are not a brand new phenomenon, but one of a recurring series. And at each of them from 2010 to 2017, there was a hero, who got his own biographical webcomic by Portland-based cartoonist Liz Yerby, which has lately made its way to the protestors in Chile.

  Good Dog. And thank you to every comics artist that is using the medium to do this kind of nonfiction reporting, no matter how narrow the subject.

• On a lighter note, Ngozi Ukazu is spending a bit of time before the last Check, Please! collection releases in April reminding us about the depth of worldbuilding she put into her gay college hockey bros story. For years, Ukazu tweeted in-character observations, in something approaching real story time — events that happened at the start of the academic year would go up in September, and so forth.

  She’d lock the account to avoid spoilers as she dove into each year’s story arc, leaving them inaccessible to fans for large chunks of time. A good hunk of the first Check, Please! collection from :01 Books was made up of tweets and other ephemera from the two years of story time covered.

  And now she’s out with a collection of tweets and other ephemera:

  Now, for the first time, I’m collecting Bitty’s best TWEETS. (!!!) And I’m doing this in a book I call THE CHIRPBOOK.

  And on top of collecting Bitty’s Tweets, The Chirpbook will contain new selfies, never-before-seen pictures from Jack Zimmermann’s camera roll, brand new comics, and secret tweets from Bitty’s senior year. (So, SPOILERS!) All of these features and more will be in The Chirpbook, the perfect catalog to round out your Check, Please! Collection.

  It’s a simple campaign: book (hardcover and soft), stickers, miniprints. It’s full of spoilers and so it won’t release until April, concurrent with the aforementioned second :01 collection and the end of the comic itself. The crowdfund is creeping up on the 50% mark of the US$26,000 goal, and while I don’t think this will hit the crazy heights of Ukazu’s previous book collections (after all, it’s not the main story and there aren’t any crazy-high dollar pledge tiers), her legion of fans will most definitely be all over this.

  Oh, and I’ll be making note of this WRT Kickstarts for the next while at least: The Chirpbook carries the logo of the Kickstarter Union. I hope to see this become the rule rather than noteworthy.

Spam of the day:

Hello, I’m 6 years old, I’m shooting and editing a video myself, please rate my new video, thanks !!!

Got to say, the English language proficiency of the alleged six year old is much better than that of the presumed adults that send most of the spam I get. Also, you’re lying.

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¹ There’s basically no regulatory constraints on what corporations can do, and the government is almost wholly beholden to business. The Heritage Foundation regards it as the freest economy in South America and number seven in the world. This is on the basis of business freedom and property rights (ie: no regulatory regime), noting that there is room for improvement in labor freedom (ie: labor has too much). This is all the legacy of the murderous (but economically free!) Pinochet regime, put into place by a CIA-backed coup in 1973.

I was going to talk about this yesterday, but the post was getting full, I didn’t want it to get overly compressed, and also there were trick or treaters to attend to. Also, putting it off to today allows us to tie into a significant date, so today it is.

Backstory: Exactly one year ago tomorrow, David Malki ! closed the Kickstart for the first Wondermark print collection in about forever (or, since about 2012 if we want to be pedestrian about it). Malki ! being Malki !, he promised that the book would get progressively larger the more funding it got, and also that color would be added to many of the strips. He knew up front he would have to design a book to contain at least Wondermark #556 through #740 and eventually grew by 16 pages, or some 30 comics.

Then life happened.

Look, anybody that backs a Kickstarter that says Your stuff will be delivered in April of 2019 and takes that as more than a vague suggestion is setting themselves up for disappointment. Malki ! took various freelance gigs that paid for things like his toddler son not dying in the snow of hunger¹, which took time away from designing the book. Design work that he couldn’t really have gotten too much of a head start on until he knew how long the damn thing was gonna be.

Anyway. April 2019 comes, and the book is still in the dummy stage. A’course, April means you’re into Con season, so it was about ready to go to print in August, with a hope of completion or shipping in September or October. One may note that it is now November, but I propose that any Wondermark backers out there not be too upset because Malki ! did something astonishing two days ago:

I have officially submitted the book to the printer!

Wait, that’s not astonishing at all. Hang on a tick:

My original plan was to have this book done this spring, then follow it up with another campaign right about now, for the next book in the series. Just roll right into the next one!

But as I mentioned in the previous update, and as you know, it was tough to get this book put together in a timely fashion.

I came to two conclusions:

• At this rate, I won’t have time to make another book anytime soon.
• I really want this book to be worth the wait!

So I just put the content that was going to go in THAT book, into THIS book as well. This included doubling the number of color comics in the book.

And now the book you’re going to get will be 304 pages long. [emphasis mine]

Let’s just emphasize the point for anybody that’s at the back — if you backed the Friends You Can Ride On Kickstarter, you are now getting two hardcover books for the price of one. Still no sea lions² or sick elephants, but did you catch the part where you’re getting more than twice the book you contracted for? The basic pledge level for a book was US$22, which is unbelievably cheap for a 128 (later 144) page hardcover, and is mind-blowingly cheap for a 304 page hardcover. I’m not sure how Malki ! is avoiding taking a loss on these.

So if you are one of the 455 people that lucked out, you are morally obligated to buy some extra stuff from Malki ! this upcoming holiday season, and to also never complain about delayed Kickstart fulfillment until you hit the 12 months late mark. As it is, the book will likely be in our hands by the solstice (Malki ! has opted to have books shipped direct from China instead of waiting for them to be freighted across the Pacific). So between now and when you get the new, expanded Friends You Can Ride On, check out the Wondermark store at TopatoCo or maybe the alternate Wondermark Dry-Goodsery, where shortly we should see the annual calendar’s new edition for 2020 announced.

And should you see David Malki ! in person in the near future, do take a moment to tell him he is the up-standingest of dudes.

Spam of the day:

I’ve Heard of This DIY Hack but I Wasn’t Sure It Actually Works

Huh. They’ve gone from spam enticements based on Free Money Tips, Sex Tricks, and Health Secrets to DIY Hacks. I suppose that’s a thing.

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¹ Granted, they live in LA, so the snow is probably a bit hyperbolic. Mea culpa.

² My mind is frequently blown by the facts that a) the sea lion strip is more than five years old, and 2) how apropos it remains on a daily basis. Go away, sea lions! At least until we see you in the next Wondermark collection!

• As has been established on this page, Homestar*Runner is a webcomic, just one that updates rather infrequently. But happily for all who love awesome things, one of the occasions upon which you can count on H*R to update is Hallowed Ween, and this year’s spooooky story and costume fest is now available at YouTube, hooray!
• I mean, it’s also up at the H*R site, and the trailer is worth watching, too if you’re willing to brave an unpleasant terror or two. I speak, naturally, of the fact that the H*R site relies (as did much of early to mid Webcomickstan) upon the worst technology ever constructed by putatively human hands, Adobe Flash.

  Flash!¹ The security nightmare of a million breached websites and stupid, designed-in vulnerabilities. Flash, which sucked up power and which browsers have been trying to quietly ignore for years now. Flash, which we’ve all done without for so very, very long. Flash, which at long last is getting what it deserves, which is to sink even further into obscurity:

  “Google Search will stop supporting Flash later this year,” said Dong-Hwi Lee, a Google engineering manager, in a blog post. “In Web pages that contain Flash content, Google Search will ignore the Flash content. Google Search will stop indexing standalone SWF files.”

  Lee says most websites and users won’t notice anything right away, and that’s because Flash no longer does much to help sites rank higher in the Google Search algorithm. But web publishers who still rely on Flash should be looking at other technologies if they want Google Search traffic.

  In an email clarifying the web giant’s position, a spokesperson said indexed Flash content will not be removed immediately from search results, though it will disappear as the index is updated over time. Pages that include Flash files will themselves continue to be indexed, though the Flash components will be omitted.

  Which brings up an interesting dilemma — there’s lots of old websites (including webcomics) that have gone by the wayside, but which live forever in our hearts and also the mighty repository known as the Internet Archive. What will happen to those archived pages when Flash no longer exists, when browsers escalate from merely ignoring it to actively suppressing it? How much will be beyond our reach? Some day, chunks of the culture may exist only for those that visit an appropriate museum or painstakingly maintain obsolete technology.

  And it won’t end with Flash. What happens when JavaScript is superceded, or some future standard of HTML or CSS finally declares it’s no longer maintaining compatibility with the versions we use now? If you’ve got comics that rely on a formerly standard (or at least widespread) architecture that’s falling from favor, you need to decide how to translate them to a form that will survive. We’re in the midst of a rolling Digital Dark Age, frantically creating new while losing the ability to read the old, and I don’t think a Digital Renaissance will be upon us without some damn good translation tools.

• That last section was kind of a bummer, so let’s end on an up note: today is the last day of Inktober, and while there was so very much that was so very good², I am going to point you to one that is near to my heart. I made Cat Farris’s acquaintance at #ComicsCamp this year, where we quickly began to nerd out about the noblest dogs to stride the Earth, greyhounds. Cat and her husband Ron Chan are members of Portland’s Helioscope Studio and parents to frequent studio mascot Sally the greyhound.

  I think you see where I’m going with this: a month’s worth of #LifeWithSallyDog #Inktober drawings. Some are silly and cartoony, some are serious (or at least as serious as you get with a greyhound), all of them capture the innate joy these fuzzy lumps exude on those occasions when they deign to be awake. Browse them all, and try not to smile wider at each one; you won’t be able to.

Okay, time to go camp the front door for Trick or Treaters. Have a good one, everybody!

Spam of the day:

New hot project galleries, daily updates http://milfpornteen.[redacted].com/?tatum

Stop just throwing words together, spammers. Words having meanings! MILF and teen are opposites. Are you going to try to entice me with barely legal MILFs next?

Oh crap, you totally are. We live in Hell.

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¹ Ah-ahhhhh!

² I mean, did you see graphic novelist Bruce McCorkindale’s arthouse movies by Muppets theme? It’s amazing.

It was eight weeks back that we saw the ending of Giant Days, regular comic series, with the graduation of Esther and Daisy (Susan’s medical training continuing), the culmination of a friendship that started three academic years prior (and wedged in between other Tackleford stories for us). We knew there would be one for go-round for the three best friends, and today it’s available in the comics shops.

Giant Days: As Time Goes By is a return to the loopy, laws-of-physics-need-not-apply rules that held in the original miniseries, and even into the start of the regular series¹. We’ve had a lot of the uncontrolled happenstance that comes about from small things — bad housemates, illicit chinchillas, the death of a parent, falling in love, fear of change — and it’s only fair to come full circle and remember when these characters weren’t quite so grounded². We’ve seen hints of it as the regular series wrapped up (particularly as Daisy finished her archeology degree and began to learn the most important thing about being an archeologist — avoiding curses), and now it’s time to have one last explosion of the fantastical as the ladies settle into their lives.

It all comes down, as all inciting incidents do, to Esther. She’s a year out from university, on the cusp of who she will be, and conflicted about how much that person will be her, and how much the diametric opposite. There are, as in the first mini, evil posh girls that must be defeated. True to form, Daisy believes in better natures, Susan in removing organs from those who offend her, McGraw in the avoidance of conflict, and Ed Gemmell in seeking a path with the least potential for bloody vengeance.

I was going to say it ends on a cliffhanger, but that’s not right because this is the Proverbial It; there will be no follow on to see how the decisions made turn out (or even what some of those decisions are). It ends, full stop, and while life goes on for those we’ve followed, we aren’t privy to their lives any longer.

For those that have read it, John Allison hast posted a set of annotations and explanations at the Bobbins site, immediately below Ryan and Shelley in the long-ago times, a decade or more of story time before³ what we see in print today. It’s one big spoiler, so don’t click through until you’re ready.

And when you’ve read the issue, and when you’ve read the commentary track, take a moment to thank Allison, artists Lissa Tremain and Max Sarin, inker Liz Fleming, colorist Whitney Cogar, and letterer Jim Campbell. Allison will have more stories to tell, the others will tell their own and collaborate with writers, but any time that you find two or more of them coming back together on a project, it’ll be special; this was a creative team that hit on all cylinders and made something that got better, month after month, for most of five years. These are comics that will hold up and be just as good any time you go back to revisit them in the decades ahead.

Or, as I plan to, this weekend. It’s only about … I’m going to ballpark it at about 1300 pages, a section of my bookshelf that will never be retired.

Spam of the day:

The 3 Deadly “Small Shop” Mistakes (and how to avoid them!)

Woodworking spam today, in honor of Graham McGraw. He’s had a hard time this year, and correcting bad carpentry practice will surely lift his spirits.

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¹ Lest we forget the introduction of one of the most important supporting characters, McGraw, was accomplished by the exploitation of Esther’s drama field, where things just happen around her to the benefit of maximum chaos.

² Yes, I just described Esther, Daisy, and Susan as grounded, a word properly applied to McGraw, Ed Gemmell, and Nina.

³ Time in and around the Tackleverse never was much more than a series of suggestions, after all. The last Bad Machinery story would have taken place a good five years past As Time Goes By and my goodness, that was finished more than two and a half years ago.

Oh, but it is drear out there today, but I’ve had conversations about literature and art, and there are nifty things a-borning that I’m happy to share with you.

• This page stands second to none in its admiration of Tillie Walden’s work, as well as consideration of the fact that she must at some point take a breath before diving into her next head-down, year-long creative endeavour. You can’t work like you’re 23 forever, after all. And while I will always greet the announcement of a story from Walden, I’m also pleased to see that her next announced release will not be narrative in form, but an act of almost pure illustration:
  

  It may be a year away but multiple award-winning artist Tillie Walden’s next project from mind-body-spirit publisher Liminal 11 is one that will no doubt be eagerly anticipated for the next twelve months by her ever growing fanbase. Walden’s Cosmic Slumber Tarot is described by Liminal 11 as “a unique exploration that will undoubtedly bring tarot to a whole new audience. At once, both gloriously universal and deeply personal.”

  Did I say non-narrative? I meant in the sense of named characters and dialogue and plot; anybody that’s been following Walden’s twitterfeed for Inktober can tell you that her illustrated pages tell stories of their own, your imagination supplying all the necessary details. Walden will be sharing the work as it’s made over the next however long online, so follow her if you aren’t already.

• Hey, you know who is the best friend to individual creators in comics is? Scott McCloud. His superpower is he forgets no one, no matter how long it’s been since he saw you last, or how long it takes you to complete a work because little things like life insist on being attended to. It’s because of McCloud’s twitternouncement this morning that I now know that Dirk Tiede is celebrating two damn decades of Paradigm Shift¹ with a Kickstarting.

  Quick recap: Tiede started Paradigm shift in 1999, hopped to the Modern Tales (RIP) platform in 2002, self-published three books by 2010 and launched part four of story, which wrapped up last year. That fourth part was published as single issue minicomics, five of them, and they will be collected along with the first three parts of the story in a comprehensive, two-volume collection:

  Volume One will collect the original books, Part One: Equilibrium, Part Two: Agitation, and Part Three: Emergence into one beautiful new collection with 340+ pages of artwork, footnotes and bonus material, including 22 new colorized pages.
  Volume Two will collect the latest storyline, Part Four: Flight into a brand new graphic novel edition with 250+ pages, including 10 new colorized pages and footnotes.

  Those two volumes are available for US$25 each, or US$50 for the pair, along with other, fancier support tiers. Campaign runs until the day before [American] Thanksgiving, and is more than half way to its (exceedingly modest) goal of US$5000. This one’s a reward for everybody that’s stuck with a story like an old friend, and for everybody who’d like to see what it’s like to hold onto the act of creation for the long term. Check ‘er out.

• Finally, today is book launch day for Zach Weinersmith and Bryan Caplan’s policy paper with word balloons, Open Borders. Weinersmith first mentioned it as a thing back during the book tour for Soonish, with a formal announcement and release date coming back in the spring.

  This book has taken a lot of Weinersmith’s time for a while now, but the thing about him is, he’s basically unable to spend much time working on only one daily comic strip, raising two small humans, and reading more than anybody you know²; he’s constitutionally got to have a much bigger project to work on at the same time. For a while there, he was doing all his dad-and-SMBC work, and working on Open Borders, and creating a civic-education comic with his political scientist brother.

  Before that, it was Soonish. Mixed in with all that, BAH! Fest, on at least three continents. Before that, Augie And The Green Knight with Boulet. Before that, SMBC Theatre shorts and a feature-length movie. Before that, a handful of other comics.

  My point is, with Weinersmith now merely responsible for the not-dying of two children, supporting his wife’s academic career, and producing comics on the daily, he’s going to get that itch again at some point, which means take the opportunity to grab Open Borders now because it’s just a matter of time before we have to run to catch up to him on the next thing. Or at the very least, check out the video interview with the two of them over at Heidi’s place.

Spam of the day:

A breakthrough study has shown that this “odd” vegetable reverses diabetes at the source. Can you guess which one it is? a) Horned Melon b) Kohlrabi c) Jicama

Well gosh, a) is a fruit, b) isn’t odd, it’s genetically identical to a half-dozen of the most commonly eaten veg that exist (thanks, Brassica oleracea), so I’m guessing jicama? But why hedge your bets? I bet you could do an awesome slaw out of all three and never have to click your malware-infested clickbait site to clarify the fake fact you’re dangling at me.

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¹ Near as I can tell, the first mention of him here at Fleen was in February 2008 on the occasion of picking up the first volume of PS.

² For real, guy reads 25 – 30 books a month, and I’m not exaggerating.

On a Monday, no less! Maybe it has to do with the mood elevation that comes from watching Screamy Orange Grandpa realize that he’s being booed by an entire sports stadium, over and over. There will be an explosion of tweetarrhea to punish us all later, I’m certain, but for now all is just a little bit better. Let’s keep that positive feeling going.

There’s just something about webcomics that causes some folks to end up with closely-matching birthdays: Ryan North and John Allison, Dylan Meconis and Katie Lane¹, Jeffrey and Holly Rowland, Jon Rosenberg and some hack webcomics pseudojournalist. And yes, I know the math about cohort sizes and likelihood that two people in the same group will have the same birthday², but let us just admit that it’s neat.

Today, we get to wish Happy Birthdays³ to two more stellar creators, who have produced some of my favorite books in the past couple of years.

On the one hand: Molly Knox Ostertag, creator of the Witch Boy series (the concluding entry in which is due next week) and How The Best Hunter In The Village Met Her Death, artist on Strong Female Protagonist and Shattered Warrior, and soon to be traumatizer of children.

On the other hand: Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, creator of stellar shorter works (a collection of which was just Kickstarted and will be shipping soon), artist on Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, multiple brick-haver, and owner of dangerous earrings.

They are both celebrating their respective births today, and I am so, so glad that we all get to live in a time when their work is widely available and justly lauded. Their comics are so different from what so many people would have you believe are real comics, and the current Golden Age we are seeing in comics at present is in no small part due to the efforts of them and their contemporaries. They are rad ladies and I can’t wait to see what they have produced in their 20s, but into their 30s and 40s and beyond. They’re both only going to get better. Happy Birthday, Rosemary and Molly!

One more thing, since we’re in a good mood: Alison Wilgus announced the official book launch event for her most recent graphic novel (Chronin volume 2: The Sword In Your Hand, a review of which I need to compose after giving it another read or three; it’s heady stuff, and stays with you) today, and maybe you get to attend:

NEXT THURSDAY is the official book debut event for Chronin Volume 2, hosted by the amazing @KinokuniyaUSA store here in NYC! I’ll do a quick presentation about my process, sign books, and generally be VERY happy to have all of Chronin out in the world!
https://usa.kinokuniya.com/event-calendar …

I’m going to do my best to attend, both because I love the book and wish to help Wilgus celebrate, and because it’s been too long since I’ve been to Kinokuniya in Midtown (I used to work about two blocks from there, and haven’t been in since I developed my fountain pen habit). So with any luck I’ll see you at 6th Ave between 40th and 41st — across from Bryant Park — at 6:00pm on 7 November, with my copy of Chronin in hand. In the meantime, everybody feel good for Alison, not only for this book release, but for the great editing job she’s been doing on the Adventure Zone graphic novels.

Spam of the day:

This is an impeccably, motley invitation to join me in Seventh-Heaven; to RITE zzzillions! of overdude books for the lengthNbreadth of eternity, emphasize’n in whatever God has ‘aujourd d’hui’: the Psycadelic VitSee, the Protagonist of the Exponential Universe, exploring the concept of the endless, bombastic now in His validation of
the G O O G L e P L E X I A N T H…

…

…

What.

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¹ Light-ning Law-yer!!

² By the time you’ve got 23 people in a group, the chances of two of them having the same birthday is already greater than 50%. Besides Jon, I knew one guy in high school with my birthday and since I started in EMS two other people that joined my agency had my same birthday, and one more not only lived in the house I lived in when I was 5, but sleeps in my old bedroom. COINCIDENCE??

Yes. Coincidence.

³ Happys Birthday? Happy Birthsday?

What.

WHAT.

WHAT.

No spam of the day, but I do believe that the Events tag applies.

Readers of any regularity will immediately recognize that we at Fleen have been somewhat … let’s say somewhere between skeptical and disappointed at some of the policy directions that Patreon has taken. That is to say, we think that the original mission of providing a tool to allow distributed funding of creative types has been co-opted by the Silicon Valley venture fund types that want their M-F’in big payout, because that’s what SVvf types do. Which is not to deny the fact that Patreon has been life-changing for many creators, just that they need to decide on what and who their users are, and how they want to interact with them and friggin’ stick with it.

But sometimes, radical new approaches are good:

Today, I’m launching a new thing. It’s called Super Patron: A Creator Arts Endowment Fuck Yeah. It’s an arts endowment for creators. The first grant is for $50,000. Anyone, anywhere in the world, can apply at http://superpatron.org. Fuck yeah. @superpatronfyea

That from Jack Conte (the non-evil Jack of SV media companies), one of the founders of Patreon. Conte’s not a SVvf type, he came up as a working musician, half of Pomplamoose, who basically invented Patreon because he needed it himself. And now he’s got some creative folk together (including Danielle Corsetto) to help him pick a creator to get a monthly-stipend grant to make making stuff easier. Aside from Conte being the CEO of Patreon, there’s no association between it and Super Patron; it’s a 501c(3) nonprofit.

I like this idea; it’s similar to one that Andy McMillan (the Irish half of The Andys¹) tried to put together a couple years back². The difference being, I suppose, the capital you can bring immediately to your effort as CEO of Patreon vs a community-minded event organizer who moves from project to project. Regardless, Super Patron is probably something you should look at applying to. The odds are better than the lottery, and it doesn’t cost two bucks to enter.

When you’re done clicking over to try to get a chunk of that sweet, sweet grant money, there’s another website you should be clicking on, and this one will cost you some money — but no more than you can afford. The case of the Indie Comics Eleven continues to drag out, despite the fact that only three defendants remain attached to the bullshit lawsuit by a terrible person. As Hazel Newlevant tweeted today, they, Whit Taylor, and Morgan Pielli are down to less than US$3000 in their legal defense fund, and their lawyer costs about US$5000 per ten hours of work.

This, of course, was the entire purpose of the suit — the plaintiff³, suffering a case of butthurt in the first degree, brought an action whose only possible outcome is to be as expensive and time-consuming as possible to those he regards as his enemies, which also serves to prevent anybody in the future from crossing him lest they also end up bankrupted. If you thinks this bullshit lawsuit is, in fact, bullshit, consider contributing anything you can afford, and also call your representatives and Senators and tell them it’s well past time for there to be a federal anti-SLAPP statute.

Spam of the day:

How to choose your sexy Russian wife?

This sounds disturbingly like a buyer’s guide, which is just icky.

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¹ Who, ironically enough, were tasked by Kickstarter with engineering a Patreon killer, but couldn’t make the math work sustainably.

² Disclaimer: I committed to making a significant cash contribution to McMillan’s foundation, should it ever launch. Signed a piece of paper and everything.

³ He doesn’t get named on my page, fuck that guy.